The invention relates to an electrical and/or optical interface device for an industrial plant where a first piece of equipment, especially of the automatic machine type, is linked to at least one other via the interface device to which it is connected by means of at least one multipoint connector.
Many industrial plants comprise pieces of equipment and especially automatic industrial machines whose operation involves connecting at least one other place of equipment, especially to a piece of equipment for management, via electrical-wire and/or optical-fiber links for transmitting signals and power. Moreover, it is frequently the case that connecting one piece of equipment to another requires adaptation so that what is transmitted by one can be used by the other, and vice versa if necessary. It is therefore usual to make interface devices allowing such inter-equipment adaptations. Such an interface device may be directly incorporated into a piece of equipment to be interconnected with another, may be distributed among the two pieces of equipment to be interconnected or else may be constructed as an independent unit to which the pieces of equipment are connected by wire or fiber links.
As is known, making an interface device in the form of an independent unit has in particular the advantage of allowing two pieces of equipment to be used, after they have been connected together, without having to materially modify these pieces of equipment, when the latter are not originally designed to operate directly with each other without any adaptation. The pieces of equipment to be interconnected by means of such a unit are linked to it by means of links and it is conventional to provide the links with male or female connectors allowing them to be mated with complementary connector elements on the unit and/or on the pieces of equipment in order to allow rapid connections and disconnections, as well as easy equipment or interface-unit substitutions, if required.
There are therefore many inter-equipment interface devices which are made in the form of independent units to which the pieces of equipment to be interconnected are connected.
Moreover, it is common practice to physically join together the connection interfaces of the same plant, or of the same one functional assembly of a plant, with a certain number of electrical and/or optical connection components and, for example, terminal blacks used for electrical power distribution, in particular for making the work of maintenance staff easier.
In a known embodiment, the terminal blacks and other connection components rise attachment pieces which allow them to be mounted on support rails of standardized shape and size. There are interfaces such as those mentioned above which are made in the form of printed circuit boards and which are combined with means allowing them to be mounted on support rails, each board having conducting tracks and carrying electrical, electronic and/or optical components.
Document FR-A-2,548,511 describes especially a simplified configuration of a motherboard-type device allowing a printed circuit board to be mounted on a standardized support rail, parallel with this rail, by means of two feet for fixing to the rail, on which feet will be mounted four bars, called card holding and locking bars respectively, which immobilize this card by its edges.
It is thus possible to make interface devices for very diverse pieces of equipment simply by assembling and connecting them according to techniques very widely employed after producing a suitable electrical circuit using conducting tracks made on a printed circuit board.
Designers therefore have very great construction flexibility, but this has the drawback of resulting in a very wide variety of constructions since there is minimal standardization in this context and it may be difficult to find a replacement card that is directly substitutable for a defective card. It may also be necessary to replace an entire card in order to be able to make a relatively minor modification if such a modification had not been anticipated and if the initially provided configuration of the board does not lend itself thereto.
Moreover, printed circuit boards have the drawback of being relatively fragile if one considers the elements with which they are likely to come into contact on a support rail and the wire or cable links with which they way be required to engage.